Brief on Iran

OIAC Newsletter- Brief On Iran, November 3rd, 2014

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Brief On Iran 
Nov, 03/ 2014
  Iran- Human Rights (Women, Minorities, Ethnics)
 Iranian people continue to express outrage over acid attacks despite repression
Veooz

Despite the fact that the Iranian regime has been preventing people from holding public protest against the brutal attacks, posters were distributed in Tehran condemning the attacks. In a desperate attempt to counter the growing anger expressed by the Iranian people, a number of senior Iranian officials claimed that the recent spate of acid attacks on women in the country “is the work of foreign agents,” whom he accused of seeking to undermine the stability of the regime.

 
 Iran’s non-Muslims face prison, execution, despite ‘reform’ claims, says new UN report
Fox News

“The state of freedom of religion and belief in Iran is not improving, It is deteriorating,” Dwight Bashir, deputy director of policy and research at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
Iran’s regime conducted a raid on an Easter service and arrested Christians, subjected Christian converts to death threats and psychological abuse and shut down licensed churches, according to a UN report that will be submitted to world leaders on Tuesday.

While persecution of religious minorities is nothing new in the Islamic Republic, the 28-page catalog of horrors compiled by Ahmed Shaheed, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Right in the Islamic Republic of Iran, undermines the claim that President Hassan Rouhani has ushered in a new era of tolerance.
 U.N. rights investigator ‘shocked’ by latest Iran execution

Reuters

(Reuters) – A U.N. human rights investigator on Monday expressed shock at Iran’s weekend execution of a 26-year-old woman convicted of murdering a man she accused of trying to rape her as a teenager, saying he had repeatedly voiced concerns to Tehran about her trial.

Reyhaneh Jabbari walked to the gallows at dawn on Saturday in Tehran’s Evin prison after failing to secure a reprieve from the dead man’s relatives within the 10-day deadline set by sharia law in force since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

“I was shocked over the weekend by the execution of Ms. Reyhaneh Jabbari,” the U.N. special rapporteur on Iran, Ahmed Shaheed, told reporters.

The New York Times

 UNITED NATIONS – Executions have surged in Iran and oppressive conditions for women have worsened, a United Nations investigator said on Monday, drawing attention to rights abuses just as Iran‘s president is pushing for a diplomatic breakthrough with the West.

The investigator, Ahmed Shaheed, a former diplomat from the Maldives and now special rapporteur on human rights in Iran, made the comments on the eve of presenting his latest findings to members of the United NationsGeneral Assembly.

Mr. Shaheed said he had been shocked by the execution on Saturday of Reyhaneh Jabbari, 26, who was convicted of killing a man she had accused of raping her. The death sentence had prompted international outcry and efforts by the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, to rescind it. Under the Iranian Constitution, the president has no power over the judiciary.

International Liberty Association

Along with the anti-human crime of throwing acid into the faces of defenseless women in Iran, the wave of executions in the cities across the country has increased.to us for that

In the span of 12 days (October 18 to 29) at least 55 prisoners have been executed in Iran. The real figure is much larger as the Iranian regime does not provide information on every execution being carried out in numerous prisons throughout the country

A group of 17 prisoners were secretly hanged on Monday (October 27, 2014)in city of Taybad in northeastern Iran and 47 others are on death row. These executions followed the hanging of a group of eight inmates on October 18 in the same prison

 

Ten more prisoners were secretly hanged in the central prison in the western city of Orumiyeh, including Ebrahim Choupani, a severely mentally disturbed prisoner who was hanged on October 29.

Four other prisoners were also hanged early in the morning of October 27 in the same prison after another group of five were hanged on October 18 in a different prison in the city known as Darya.
  Iran: Bahai’s family not allowed to bury their child

Iran Press Watch

It has been over one week since the twelve-year old, Mahna Samandari has passed away but her parents have not been allowed to bury her. Mahna’s parents who suffer from physical handicaps are not only grieving the loss of their daughter but are devastated from “regulations” that deny them the right to burying their child in the local cemetery of Tabriz.

Before the Islamic revolution the Baha’i community in Tabriz had acquired a cemetery that was later confiscated by the government authorities. Until the 2011 the community was able to bury their dead in the cemetery until August of 2011 when the authorities announced that they no longer allow Baha’i interments. In the past three years at least twenty Baha’i individuals were denied burial in this cemetery. As an alternative, authorities are suggesting a burial ground in Urumia or the city of Miandoab, located at least 60 minutes outside of the city. Common sense and religious laws prohibit remote burial grounds, especially for Samandaris who are physically disabled.
  Iran- Terrorism Activities (Middle East)
The New York Times

In May, I visited Vietnam and met with university students. After a week of being love-bombed by Vietnamese, who told me how much they admire America, want to work or study there and have friends and family living there, I couldn’t help but ask myself: “How did we get this country so wrong? How did we end up in a war with Vietnam that cost so many lives and drove them into the arms of their most hated enemy, China?”

It’s a long, complicated story, I know, but a big part of it was failing to understand that the core political drama of Vietnam was an indigenous nationalist struggle against colonial rule – not the embrace of global communism, the interpretation we imposed on it.

The North Vietnamese were both communists and nationalists – and still are. But the key reason we failed in Vietnam was that the communists managed to harness the Vietnamese nationalist narrative much more effectively than our South Vietnamese allies, who were too often seen as corrupt or illegitimate. The North Vietnamese managed to win (with the help of brutal coercion) more Vietnamese support not because most Vietnamese bought into Marx and Lenin, but because Ho Chi Minh and his communist comrades were perceived to be the more authentic nationalists.

US News

It’s a mistake to think Iran will be an ally in the fight against the Islamic State group.

As the gathering whirlwind of religious extremism masquerading as Islam leaves a trail of devastation in the Middle East and threatens large parts of the globe, a key question lingers about the role of Iran. Some observers – following the tired maxim that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” – argue that the threat of the Islamic State group transcends policy differences between Tehran and the West and should allow for collaboration against a common enemy. This view is naive and dangerous. In truth, Tehran and the Islamic State group complement and strengthen each other – ideologically as well as tactically on the field of battle.

The Islamic State group is not the only organization that insults the name of our great faith. Since Islamic fundamentalism emerged as an international political force with the establishment of the clerical regime in Iran in 1979, the world has witnessed barbaric acts like stoning, limb amputations, eye-gouging and the massacre of political prisoners in the name of the so-called Islamic Republic. Export of violent fundamentalism has since become the regime’s distinctive feature, earning it the U.S. State Department’s designation as the world’s number one state sponsor of terrorism.

 
 Iran- Nuclear Activities
U.S.’s Kerry, Iran minister to meet ahead of deadline for atom deal
Reuters

Oct 31 (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will meet Iran’s foreign minister and the European Union foreign policy chief in Oman on Nov. 9-10 to discuss the Iranian nuclear issue ahead of a looming deadline for a final agreement, the U.S. State Department said on Friday.

Kerry’s talks in Muscat, Oman with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and the EU’s Catherine Ashton are due to take place two weeks before a Nov. 24 deadline for Tehran and six major powers to reach a long-term agreement on Iran’s nuclear program.
The New York Times

JERUSALEM – Israel is deeply concerned about the trajectory of the ongoing negotiations concerning Iran’s nuclear program. The talks are moving in the wrong direction, especially on the core issue of uranium enrichment.

Although Iran has modified its tone recently, there have hardly been any changes of substance since the soft-spoken president, Hassan Rouhani, took over the reins from his aggressive predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Neither administration has budged from the insistence that Iran should retain most of the 9,400 operational centrifuges it deploys to enrich uranium, as well as its nearly completed nuclear reactor in Arak, which could produce plutonium in the future.

Iran has softened its inflammatory anti-Western rhetoric and shown some flexibility on less important issues but we must not be duped by these gestures. President Obama must stand by his declaration that no deal with Iran is better than a bad deal.

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